SHASTA COLLEGE LIBRARY 11555 Old Oregon Trail  *  PO Box 496006  *   Redding, CA 96049-6006

Library Contact:  Carolyn Salus Singh

Course: Family Studies and Services 25 - Nutrition
Instructors: Keiko Goto, Ph.D. , Pat Carlson, M.S.,M.P.H.,R.D.

The Shasta College Library offers you many  resources, in print and online, for conducting research. Your current assignment, locating and reviewing a scholarly article from an online magazine or periodical, requires that you first select an appropriate resource and then determine the authority of its reporter and veracity of its contents.  The "Locating Articles" section below provides suggestions for selecting a database and finding a suitable article for review.  The "Verifying Your Source/Author" section includes guidelines on critical evaluation of print and online literature.

For this assignment, the terms refereed and peer reviewed are used synonymously. The 13th edition of Magazines for Libraries (Ready Ref Z 6941 .M23 2004) defines a refereed journal as one where "manuscripts submitted...are examined both by the editor and one or more specialist in the individual field before approval is given to publish.  The readers (sometimes called an editorial board) apparently ensure a better chance that the final product will be a contribution to knowledge."

Locating Articles

The Library subscribes to over 50 Articles & Databases to help you locate magazine and newspaper articles.  The following contain current, full text, peer reviewed articles on nutrition and nutrition-related subjects. The recently expanded Ebsco family of databases includes the full text (or online links to the full text) of general interest, professional, and academic journal articles. Ebsco's a great place to begin your search for a current, peer reviewed article on nutrition.

    Login On Campus:

• Go to any computer with Internet access (on campus that includes all computers in the Library and Writing Center).
• Go to the Shasta College Library Webpage [http://library.shastacollege.edu/].
• Click on Articles and Databases.
• Click on Magazines.
• Click on Academic Search Premier (Scholarly Journals).
• You may search multiple databases simultaneously.   For most nutrition searches select at least:
• Academic Search Premier
• Masterfile Premier
• Health Source: Consumer Edition
• Health Source: Nursing Academic Edition
• Click on Continue

• Go to the Shasta College Library Webpage [http://library.shastacollege.edu/]
• Click on Articles and Databases.
• Click on Magazines.
• Scroll to Academic Search Premier (Scholarly Journals).
• Click on the satellite icon  in the Off Campus column.  Click on Login.
• Select EbscoHost Web
• You may search multiple databases simultaneously.  For most nutrition searches select at least:
• Academic Search Premier
• Masterfile Premier
• Health Source: Consumer Edition
• Health Source: Nursing Academic Edition
• Click on Continue:

1. Login to Ebschost Web

2. Select databases.

3. Rewrite your topic as a keyword search.  Suppose you are seeking a research article that addresses the correlation of fast food consumption and the rise of adolescent obesity among teens in the U.S.  Your search strategy could look like this:

• Sample Search: "fast food" and obes* and (teen* or adolescen* or child*)
• A preliminary search of Academic Search Premier; MasterFILE Premier; Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition; Health Source - Consumer Edition yields nearly 200 articles.

4.  Click on the Refine Search  tab.  Scroll down to limit your results. Select Full Text and Scholarly
(Peer Reviewed) Journals.

5.  Click on Search.  About 15 full text, peer reviewed articles are retrieved.

Searching and Viewing Tips

Specific searches are more effective than broad ones.  A search on the term "nutrition" will yield many irrelevant articles.  You will have better results if you look for a certain aspect of nutrition such as "nutrition and aging" or "olestra."

f you are having trouble using a database, consult the Help files. Help files are usually found by clicking a button marked "Help" or "Online Help."

To read PDF files you must install the Adobe® Acrobat® Reader. Information about this application, which is available for free, is available on the Adobe website.

To limit to refereed articles:
• Enter search strategy
Sample Search: "fast food" and obes* and (teen* or adolescen* or child*)
• Scroll down to Limit your results, click on Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals, and click on Search
 
To limit to  articles published since January 2002:
• Click on Advanced Search
• Enter search strategy
• Scroll down to Limit your results, enter approprate months in the Date Published box and click on Search.
 
To increase number of articles retrieved:
• Scroll down to  Expand your search to
• Click on Also search within full text of articles.
 
To learn more about an individual journal:
• After you complete a search, click on the article's title
• Scroll to the Source field and click on the journal's title.
• Note that Peer Reviewed field is marked either "yes" or "no".
 
To learn more about an individual  author:
• Scroll to the bottom of the article.  A brief biography of the author is often located at the end of the article.  Sometimes the author's contact information is given as well.
• Open an article in full text html and click on the author's name.  This will yield other publications by the same author.
• Try a new search.  Click on Refine Search, place the author's name in quotes.
• Scroll down to  Expand your search to
• Click on Also search within full text of articles.  This should retrieve articles that discuss the author or cite his prior work.

Verifying Your Source/Author

Here are some additional ways to verify your source:

Consult Magazines for Libraries (Z6941 M23 2004 REF), an annual publication at the Ready Reference desk of the Library.

• Find the entry for your journal in the Title Index (begins page 1035).
• A typical entry includes: years published, frequency of publication, editor's name and contact, publisher's address, website address (if available), subscription information, article submission information, advertising information,  intended audience and focus.
• If a journal is peer reviewed, the term "Refereed" will appear after the publisher's address.  The intended audience for peer reviewed articles is usually described as "Ac" for Academic (that is, readers at Colleges and Universities).
• Try searching for a website for your magazine and see if there is a description of its contents, staff, and intended audience. A google search from the Library's Search Internet web page is a good place to begin.
• Go to google.com
• Place the magazine title or author's name in quotes.
• Click on Google Search.
• If the source you chose is a newsletter or pamphlet, you can try to locate information about it's publishing agency  via two different reference resources:
• Check the Associations on the Net (AON) web site. AON is a collection of over 2,000 official association sites on the Internet.
• Consult the Encyclopedia of Associations (AS22 E5 1997 REF) reference book in the Library. This information source contains listings for nearly 23,000 national organizations.

Determining an author's credentials or bias is tricky.  Here are some additonal ways you might be able to learn more about his qualifications, areas of expertise, sponsoring organizations, and other publications:

• Scroll to the bottom of your article and look for information about the author.
• If possible, click the author's hyperlinked name in your article and look at other publications that he or she has. Scan the article to see if your author is affiliated with a college or university, then look for him or her at that school
• If name isn't hyperlinked, try a new search.  Click on Advanced Search, place the author's name in quotes.
• Search the AU Author field to find other articles by the author
• Search the TX All text field to find articles about the author
• Go to a search engine, such as www.google.com, place the author's name in quotes and search.

Citing Your Source: Modern Language Association (MLA) Style

Books
• The official guide for this style is:  Joseph Gibaldi's MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 5th ed.  (Reference Desk LB2369 .G53 1999)

• Another helpful (if not official) book is:  Andrew Harnack's Online! : A Reference Guide to Using Internet Sources  (Reference TK 5105.875 .I57 .H364 2000)

Websites
 
• Modern Language Association (MLA) Style Guide (official)
• Online (companion website to Andrew Harnack's above mentioned book)
• Guide for Writing Research Papers based on MLA Style (Capital Community College)
• Modern Language Association (MLA) Style: examples (Monroe Community College)
• MLA Style Guide:examples (University of Southern Mississippi)
• Sources: Their Use and Acknowledgement (Dartmouth College)
  

Shasta College Library Information

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• All of the resources listed on this page are available via the Shasta College Library web site 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

FOR FURTHER ASSISTANCE:  Phone the Reference Desk at 225-7551 or Ask a Librarian